Building the Temple

SERMON: 2016-04-24--bt0416--building-the-temple-part-4 SOURCE DURATION: 00:52:06.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The material at both the beginning and end of the recording consists of continuous theological exposition and sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- God's desire as we have been seeing together in this series of messages on building the temple is to dwell among his people and just as in the Old Testament he dwelt among Israel first and foremost in the tabernacle and then later on in the temple so under the terms of the New Covenant through faith in Jesus Christ he has chosen to dwell in and among you and me his people. Paul puts it this way in 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16 he says we are the temple of the living God as God has said I will live with them and walk among them and I will be their God and they will be my people and we saw last week that just as the temple had to be constructed a block of stone and a timber at a time to grow up into the temple so that God could take his dwelling place among them so the church too needs to be built up a stone at a time that's what Paul talks about in Ephesians 2 21 and 22 in him that is in Christ the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit and we saw last week there are two dimensions to that each stone has to be properly related to the foundation because no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is already laid which is the person of Jesus and then secondarily every stone has to be fitly joined together the challenge for God's people is to allow them to be built up into a unified whole for the glory of God Charlie Bergraf used to be a Mason he caught me after the service last week and he said you missed something when you talked about the stones being chipped to be fit together and I said to him what was it and he said the stone also has to be split so that you can find out what lies on the inside and I said to myself isn't that an amazing picture of what God does in each of our lives as he builds us into a holy habitation for his spirit now what I'd like for us to try to do this morning in the time that we have is look at three things that David did specific steps that he took undertook towards building this temple in view of learning then what it means for you and me to be participants with God in building this temple you got to remember that even though it is Jesus who builds the church he builds the church by using the likes of you and me we are co-workers with him Paul puts it this way talking about himself and Apollos 1 Corinthians chapter 3 9 & 10 he says we are God's fellow workers you are God's field God's building notice again how he switches metaphors here at God's field God's building and then he says by the grace God has given me I laid a foundation as an expert builder and someone else is building on yet one of the most amazing things in the universe is that the Lord God who doesn't need anybody chooses to use you and me in building up this body of Christ in other words we're not only a part of this temple that God is building but he is also using you and me to build the temple and the whole idea is that God wants to dwell among his people and this is all in preparation for the day of eternity when all God's people from all time and all places joined together in perfect holiness will forever be the habitation of God in the spirit I will dwell with them and I will be among them and I will be their God and they will be my people the church is the one building project in this whole world and I'm not just talking about building I'm talking about the spiritual temple of God it is the one building project that's going to last forever and so wise people put a great deal of time and energy into seeing this temple rise up in having people related properly to Jesus and properly to each other so that God in this spirit can come and dwell among them that's why David was a man after God's own heart he understood God's purposes for Israel and he understood God's desire to dwell among his people and that's why he made these plans that's why he called all these people together and that's why they were so incredibly generous in giving of their resources so that God could find a place where God could rest so what's our part in all of that well we can learn three things I think from David and the first is this he makes sure he makes sure to follow God's plan for the temple he makes sure to follow God's plan for the temple listen again to verses 11 and 12 David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple its buildings its storerooms its upper parts its inner rooms and the place of atonement he gave him the plans of all that the spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms for the treasuries of the temple of God notice that the plans of all that the spirit had put in his mind later on in verse 19 he repeats this all this David said I have in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me and he gave me understanding in all the details of this plan in other words David didn't just sit down with his paper and pencil or however he did that back then and made all of these plans up out of his own mind no he heard from God just like Moses heard from God years earlier we read in Exodus 25 40 God says to Moses see that you make them this is the whole tabernacle and all of its furnishings according to the pattern shown you on the mountain and there's an incredibly important lesson here church isn't just what you and I think it ought to be church is what God decides it ought to be it's his house his spiritual temple and just as you and I think back those of you that are homeowners think back to when you bought your house now chances are that you went through a number of different houses before you settled on the one that you had and you weighed out what you thought you could afford to what you thought you might like and you settled on the house that you're in now and if there were features in that house that you didn't like you calculated the cost of what it would take to refurbish those rooms or those parts so that you can live comfortably in your house some of us you know we live in houses that never get finished but that's a whole other story but that's what God's like God is particular about the house that he lives in and so it's important then for us to understand what it is that God wants and what are the conditions under which we labor go back for just a moment to the verse that I quoted earlier one Corinthians 310 the first part of that verse I quoted by the grace God has given me Paul says I laid a foundation as an expert builder and someone else is building on it then notice what he says each one should be careful careful how he builds and he goes on to say that we can build with gold silver and precious stones or we can build with wood hay and stubble and he says the day of eternity is going to reveal what are the building materials that we built with everything will be tested with fire and wise people like David listen to God and they say God what is it that you want from me individually what do you want from us corporately as we try to build the church as a dwelling place for God in the spirit you understand what I'm saying David built according to God's plans so of course then the big question is what's God looking for in your life and in my life individually in corporate way well many more things than we have time with to deal this morning but I want to highlight three in particular that are just absolutely essential to be built into the very fabric of any Christian church and any Christian community including you and me here's the first one any temple that God is building must be Christ centered must be Christ centered we've already quoted 1 Corinthians 3 11 no other foundation if we can put that verse up no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid which is Jesus Christ and Jesus himself said the same thing in John 14 verse 6 I am the way and the truth and the life no one comes to the father but by me was thinking about that this morning actually as I was getting ready for the service and I I said to myself actually we need to expand Christ centered into this now get ready for this the church ought to be pneumatically Christologically theocentric pneumatically Christologically theocentric pneumatically Holy Spirit Christologically centered on Christ theocentric centered on God the Father there you have the biblical trinitarian formula God wants to be worshiped through faith in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit if you ever noticed every service we begin and often services we end with a trinitarian invocation the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all God the Father wants a relationship with each one of his children he wants that to happen through faith in Jesus and he wants that to happen in the power of the Holy Spirit and healthy church communities have a healthy balance of all those elements there are churches who are so lost in the reverence of God the Father that they forget about Jesus they don't even know the Holy Spirit there are other churches who are so enamored by Jesus they forget about the Father and they forget about the Holy Spirit and then there are churches who are so caught up in the Holy Spirit that they forget about the Father and sometimes they forget about the Son pneumatically you're gonna remember this right pneumatically christologically theocentric and the more we grow in Christ the more we'll grow in the grace that in the knowledge of both of all three persons of the Holy Trinity there are lots of people in the world who get together for a wide variety of reasons and purposes but if you are going to be part of the church you have to be pneumatically christologically theocentric and the challenge is to grow up in Christ in such a way as to make this a reality that's where the power lies by the way to overcome all the natural preferences and likes and dislikes that keep God's people apart all over the world and I can guarantee you by the time God is finished with history and it usually takes persecution for this to happen but all the barriers of race and culture and language and personal preference and prejudices they all get chipped away until God's people are bound together in the love that only Jesus Christ can provide that's the first plan that God has for the church revealed it's the mystery of God Paul says in the New Testament revealed by the Holy Spirit to the prophets and to the Apostles secondly if you want to build according to God's plan you have to build a community that must be transformational transformational life-changing Romans 12 to Paul says do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the redoing of your mind then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is God's his good pleasing and perfect will don't be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind now time forbids this morning for us to dwell on the floor plan of the tabernacle in great detail but there's something I want to show you here that's critical for us to understand remember too that the temple is only a glorified version of this same layout this layout comes from God's dwelling place in heaven it is determined by his character and how he chooses to relate to his people we've talked about this before in some detail Dave touched on it last Sunday night but let me point out something here about the layout of the tabernacle the purpose is to move from outside the tabernacle through the priesthood into the Holy of Holies which is the presence of God which is what we're looking forward in terms of eternity all the furniture of the tabernacle is geared to make it possible for sinful people to come into the presence of a holy God without being blown out of the water by the judgment of God and so there's a definite sequence to that it begins with the altar of burnt offerings where you deal with the issue of sin and surrender fulfilled in the person of Jesus then this is the place where you wash your hands and you wash your feet Jesus said to Peter prior to his going to the cross when Peter wanted his whole body to be washed the Lord Jesus said no you don't need your whole body to be washed just your hands and your feet if you're in Christ you're already made clean but you pick up garbage along the way that garbage needs to be confessed on an ongoing basis if we're going to have a relationship with God then that allows you into the holy place and in the holy place you find the candelabra representing Jesus as light of the world the first thing that happens when you deal with your garbage and when you're joined to Jesus you're allowed into his presence he gives you the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit gives you understanding about the things of God because you see without the Holy Spirit all this stuff that we're talking about is absolute nonsense it'll go right over your head who wants to live for the day of glory when you don't even see the day of glory through the Holy Spirit and you just live in the here and now that's what the candlestick represents and that over here is the table of show bread and the table of show bread represents the strength Jesus said I am the bread of life and it represents the grace that Jesus gives us to make us strong enough to serve God in a transformed way you with me so far this is God's order I didn't make this up the Bible writers didn't make this up this is based on on the temple of God in heaven fulfilled in the person of Jesus who tabernacled among us but now here's a big question for you where does all of this lead what is the last piece of furniture that you see in the holy place it's the altar of incense what do you think that represents that represents the prayers and the worship of God's people and so what you have here is transformation from self-centered human beings out here where it's all about me and my kids and my future and my job and my life and my house and my car as we progress through faith in Jesus and draw near to God we come to a place where we surrender our lives to him and now it is our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven that is transformation and this involves prayer it involves praise it involves worship it also involves serving God in our daily lives in our daily relationships in our daily activities I wonder how many of us understand that we are to glorify God in our bodies as servants of the living God every day by faith in Jesus listen to how Paul puts it he puts it this way in Romans chapter 12 this is after 11 chapters of describing what God has done for us in Christ this is not where the Christian life begins this is what you grow into if you're joined to Jesus I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship if you're in Christ and you're filled with the Holy Spirit your body is not your own and it's not about doing with your body or the members of your body what you would like to do no it has to be surrendered to God so that whether you eat or whether you drink you do all to the glory of God Peter puts it this way one Peter 2 4 & 5 and notice very carefully because he does a really interesting thing in this verse as you come to him the living stone we talked about that last week rejected by men the stone which the builders have rejected has become the head of the corner chosen by God and precious to him you also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ I wonder this morning do you catch what Peter is doing he is switching metaphors he starts out by saying you are a living stone you are being built into this temple then he switches over into but you're more than a stone you are a priest in this temple of which you are a stone and what's your job as a priest to bring spiritual sacrifices to God you know what's the measure of your spirituality this morning not how happy you feel although we like happy people I have to tell you that it's not how kind or how nice you are to your neighbor or to your spouse or how many good things you participate in it is in a life that is transformed from our human self centeredness into a life that is yielded and surrendered to go on and if you're in Christ today and you're growing in Christ that he will challenge you and call you increasingly to taking up your cross denying yourself laying aside your preferences and learning to do life the way that God wants you to do life the church is transformational it takes us from here where we are by nature to here where God wants us to be by the grace of Jesus that is why years ago when as a church we sought to define both our vision statements and our mission statement we came up with a mission statement that you've heard us repeat so many times together but that is so crucial because it describes this journey from being away from God to being surrendered and caught up in the purposes of God and just for good measure say it with me reaching restoring equipping releasing you see the trend you see the transformation away over here God I don't even know gone but gradually by God's grace my life gets restored I receive the presence the power of the Holy Spirit I discover what my gifts are and now my hands and my feet belong to Jesus if I've got a voice to sing or hands with which to make music then I'm part of a praise team if I've got a heart of compassion or a gift of mercy then I pour myself into people around me a church is not a church unless lives are changing for the glory of God I cannot repeat this enough times because there are way too many churches and way too many church people who are just content to go through the motions but who will not let Jesus change their lives I could use an email so we must be pneumatically crystal logically feocentric I love that for the record we need to be transformational and I've often said I don't care how long it takes for our lives to change but our lives must change nobody can dig in their heels and say well God's not touching that part of my life because you might just end up missing out on huge things we'll talk about that in a moment third aspect of God's plan is that every temple that God builds has to be global in orientation global in orientation that is to say not just concerned with its own little world but with a much bigger world out there think back with me to the covenant God made with Abraham we talked a lot about that over the Christmas season earlier why did God enter into covenant with Abraham what did God promise to Abraham well he promised him a nation promised him a land promised to bless him but then what else did he promise through him the blessings of God would become available to the nations of the world inherent in Gwons redemptive program is God's desire to bring people to himself so that through the church he can bring healing and restoration to the nations of the world Isaiah 49 6 a verse that's been profoundly influential in my own life it's too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth and I want to tell you something that if God brings you to himself and he fills you with the Holy Spirit and he calls you to serve him it's never just about us grooving together and being a community of believers important as that is and you know that's important it is so that the last and the lost and the least and the nations of the world will find salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and it's a very significant therefore that when in second Chronicles the temple is built and Solomon dedicates the temple he adds to his prayer the invitation for the nations of the world to come to the temple to pray God and to receive answers to their prayers it also explains why in the New Testament Jesus was so impatient with the money changers in the temple not just because they were doing business on the Sabbath or greedy but because they were doing it in the temple courts which is the place where the Gentiles could come and worship God every true church will be global in its orientation that's why we encouraged Martin Phil and Matt to head off to China and Nepal that's why we're part of a denomination that has world missions programs that is why we emphasize evangelism in this community and that is why when we were building this building and some of you old timers will remember this we got together in this auditorium before the floor went on any of you remember this and we gathered the church together and we invited people prayerfully to write on the bottom of these boards the names of people that they wanted to pray for that they wanted to come to faith in Jesus Christ I always thought we should do a survey sometime this many years later and find out what has happened to those prayers and what has happened to those people who God had placed within our hearts every time you gather in this place you need to know this you're walking on the names of people that like the high priest of old we have carried before God pleading with God for grace and mercy a true church a true believer will always be other oriented because when God meets your own needs and he puts his love in he in your heart you want to tell other people about it and that's what it is to be the church so David builds according to God's plan and what I've just described to you is by no means comprehensive there are many other elements that God is looking for in the church but that gives you a bit of a picture of what it is that God is after and that is why when again years ago we put together our vision statement we worded it the way that we did to be a biblically functioning community through which God's redemptive purposes for the world may be realized we never built this building eight years ago or whatever just for our own comfort we built it so that God could reach the last and the lost in the least and bring them to salvation here and so many of you here are the fruit of that mission and of that passion may your tribes increase a hundred fold for the glory of God all right we're not done yet there's a second thing that David does as he prepares to see this temple built and that is that he solicitates or solicits a buy-in from all the people he solicits a buy-in from all the people 1 Chronicles chapter 28 begins how it begins by David calling together all the leaders of Israel to share his vision verse 1 of chapter 28 David summoned all the officials of Israel to assemble them at Jerusalem the officers over the tribes the commanders of the divisions in the service of the king the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds and the officials in charge of all the property and livestock belonging to the king and his sons together with the palace officials the mighty men and all the brave warriors everybody and his uncle of significance in the land of Israel was invited to attend this vision casting ceremony and the takeaway for us is simple enough of course because if we want to build or be part of building a temple if you will a church community in which God can live by his spirit it involves the buy-in of a whole community and again those of you that have been around for a couple of decades will know that in the early and mid-90s we spent a lot of time congregationally developing our mission and our vision statement Dave prepared for us back then a document called living in community and our elders in those days took all of their sections through living in community to articulate what it was that we believed God was calling us to as a collective community and then then the congregation was given a chance to buy in and as I recall when we have buy-in vote it was some words in the neighborhood of 92% of you who said yes we agree that this is what God is calling us to you as a community it takes buy-in because you see the further you move into the purposes of God and a lot of people don't understand this the higher becomes the cost let me show you something that I have found really helpful and that you might find helpful also in terms of how church communities work and this is true for any organization I'm just the church but it's especially true for the church this comes from Rick Warren his book the purpose-driven church where he challenges churches to be more intentional about who it is that they are and how they can line up with God's plan and God's purpose for the church and one of the diagrams that he uses is this diagram looks like a bull eye but it's five concentric circles and you will notice those five circles represent five constituencies that are part and parcel of any given church community I'll walk you through them real fast community is the people around us the people in the city that we might have an interest in reaching with the gospel not necessarily people that have ever been through these doors people that may not even know that we exist but we exist in the middle of them crowd is a person who is at least familiar with this building and its ministry maybe they're part of the crowd of people that comes in here when we have rentals or who periodically you invite you know Christmas and Easter family and friends maybe names that are under the boards that we walk on every day a crowd is a people with a low level of commitment but who know that we exist a contributor is a person who is more actively involved in the life of the community and they contribute to some degree their time talent or their treasure maybe they you know come in a couple times a year maybe put a dollar in the collection plate or even more sometimes or they volunteer for you know one of our activities but they're they're contributors the next step is you have the committed that is to say people who buy in to the mission who buy into the vision whose hearts have been transformed by the grace of Jesus and and who let's say they're just this is their church they may or may not be members but this is their church and and they're here you know with a fair degree of regularity and they are interested in the well-being of the church and and and when they can they make their own contributions towards that and then inside is you have your core crowd and these are obviously the people that have the greatest buy-in the greatest vested interest in Christian community and they are just all in and they are the ones who formed the core around which the whole movement goes forward now I show you this for two reasons because there are two things that we need to understand about this God's desire is for movement to be from the outside to the inside in other words God wants us to grow in levels of commitment he wants to take Joe blow out here who has never been in church he wants to bring him in contact with his building and with his community then he wants that person to take the next step and become a contributor not just in terms of money or whatever else but in terms of time talent and treasure and and start considering this as being whole if you will and then the next step is to be committed to Jesus and to be committed to God's people because it isn't good enough to be committed just to Jesus out there the real test is being cemented to these odd stones that are next to you that maybe just maybe you don't like very much but that Jesus is putting you next to you the next step then is to move towards the core place where you're all in you're totally sold out to Jesus and you're totally sold out to the purposes of Jesus am I making sense here so the movement ought to be from the outside to the inside but there's a second thing I want you to notice do you notice how that circle those circles get smaller all the time you know why that is because the closer you move to the center the higher is the price the higher is the cost and the greater are the sacrifices that Jesus is asking you to make it's really that simple the greater is the payoff don't forget that the greater is the payoff because the closer you are to God nobody who puts their hope in God will ever in the long run pull on the short end of the stick let's be very clear about that and that deepening level of commitment out of our hearts comes out of an experience of God's goodness and grace remember what I said about the tabernacle model first you come to Jesus then you experience the revelation of the Holy Spirit your eyes get open and you say oh my goodness I never understood how much God in fact loved me love so amazing so divine demands my soul my life my all and God moves us forward but the people that are willing to pay that price to experience that treasure get less and less and you'll find that in the ministry of Jesus John chapter 6 Jesus is talking about being the bread of life and the fact that unless people eat his flesh and drink his blood they cannot share in the promises of God and you can imagine what that sounded like to the people that had so enthusiastically embraced his ministry and his calling and so we read this very tragic verse in John chapter 6 verse 66 from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him and the next verse is I think one of the saddest verses in the New Testament because now Jesus turns to his disciples and he says to them do you also wish to go away am I too much for you is what I'm asking of you too much is what I'm offering you too vague too far removed from your own hopes and dreams and ambitions and you gotta love Peter I mean he often put his foot in his mouth but he often got it right Simon Peter answered him Lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life we believe and know that you are the Holy One of God want to leave you with this this morning Andrew let's put those circles back up for a moment and I want each of us to do some reflecting this week next week we're gonna celebrate communion a week early because the following week is Mother's Day and because of what our worship people have planned for next week it will work out better to do it next week and traditionally the week leading up to communion is a time of self-reflection and self-examination here's the question that I want you to ask for starters which one of those five circles represents me now you're in the building so you're not part of community but you probably know people in your family or your work or your sphere of influence that are part of community in the way that we have defined it that don't know Jesus and that ought to so that's one question to ask who do I know that is part of that community but the second question to ask yourself about these circles is which one of those circles represents me am I just a part of the crowd here today gone tomorrow know people rub people come to church when I feel like it but but I've got more important priorities those take priority am I a contributor do I see what God has done for me in Christ and do I see that I owe him my life he's given me gifts he's given me talents he's given me resources what am I doing with what he has given me am I committed that is to say am I sold out you see it was Charlie Brown who said I love humanity it is people I can't stand profound statement should have had a PhD in counselor how committed am I not just to the notion of God and me not just to the notion of the church universal how committed am I to a local community of faith with all of its warts and all of its sins and all of its shortcomings and all of its blessings and all of its joys but also its pain to a degree am I committed am I what I consider myself part of the core people that are just here they're here all the time they're sold out they sacrifice they love God passionately and they love God's people passionately and it costs them a lot because it can be a painful experience so that's one question what circle am I part of and you can answer that for yourself the next question is this what does God have to do in my life to move me closer to the center what does God have to do in my life to increase my passion for Jesus and to increase my passion for this temple that God is building this community right here that we call Maranama what gets in the way what sins bind me what areas of my life has the Lord been knocking on that I refuse to surrender what sacrifice has he invited me to make that I have been unwilling to step into because I believe the cost is simply too great what is it that puts you where you are and what does Jesus need to do and what do you need to do to overcome that obstacle that fair enough because remember God's building something he's building a temple for all eternity you're gonna be part of this community of people bound together by God's Holy Spirit in perfect unity with God perfect unity with each other and you will enjoy forever the presence of God and wise people like David they see the plan they see the plan and they get as much buy-in as they possibly can I think that's where we'll stop this morning we'll need to pick it up at some later point and talk about the fact that he gives people opportunity in the rest of this story to contribute their time their talent and their treasure to building this magnificent temple that God is building you know let me get this off my chest before we close here I look at you I hear you taking this all in I just cry out and say God give us a revelation so that we can be as excited as you are about what you're doing in the world and in all of us collectively and I can talk to you about the cost of this believe you me believe you me but God willing to my dying day I will not let go of God's passion God's desire God's vision to build a people of praise and to build a people of power and I'm so glad for those of you over the years that have seen fit to join in that vision that's not my vision it's God's vision and as we have labor towards it together we have not yet begun to see what God can do through a people who are really committed to his heart and to his purposes but it begins with you and me [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:52:05.480; remove through 00:52:06.000] in our own hearts [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:52:06.000; resume after this marked segment]